NEW YORK  More than one in every 100 American adults is in jail or prison  making the United States the world's incarceration leader, according to a new report tracking the surge in U.S. inmate population.

The report, released Thursday by the Pew Center on the States, urged U.S. states to curtail corrections spending by placing fewer low-risk offenders behind bars.

"The United States imprisons more people than any country in the world," the report said. Using updated state-by-state data, it said more than 2.3 million adults were held in U.S. prisons or jails at the start of 2008  or one of every 99.1 adults out of a total population of some 230 million adults.

The numbers put the United States far ahead of more populous China, which it said has 1.5 million people behind bars, and Russia, which has 890,000. The Pew report cited January statistics from the "World Prison Brief" released by the International Center for Prison Studies at London's King's College.

It also said the U.S.  with 750 inmates per 100,000 people  "is the global leader in the rate at which it incarcerates its citizenry, outpacing nations like South Africa and Iran."

This is because we are a nation of laws. I was down in some rough part of Caracas, Venezuela a couple of weeks ago. What I saw there was much lawlessness, drunkenness, a survival of the fittest culture. Believe me when I say this, we in America have a lot to be thankful for.

That's a part of it, but probably it has more to do with the fact that we are moderate in our dealings with criminals. We don't go too lenient, like they do in Europe, and just give you time served and probation for murder, nor do we shoot you in the back of the head because we need your kidneys, like they are wont to do in China.

“The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. “

I’ve seen college students locked up here for selling a few grams of weed.

The Corrections officers I talked to are tired of these young students getting locked up for dumb ‘crimes’ and being placed next to violent offenders. But the CO's also know that lots of money comes from mommies and daddies paying fines for these students. Then taxpayers had to lock them up and pay for a new prison.

The WOD is a scam on taxpayers perpetrated by the law-enforcement "industry".

I was down in some rough part of Caracas, Venezuela a couple of weeks ago. What I saw there was much lawlessness, drunkenness, a survival of the fittest culture.I've always said that every American (male and female) should be drafted into the military or "Peace Corps" and then spend at least six months in a third world country. Most Americans don't have clue how great this country is and how blessed they are to live here.

The numbers were "especially startling" for some groups, the report said. "While one in 30 men between the ages of 20 and 34 is behind bars, for black males in that age group the figure is one in nine." Hm, 1 in 9.. That's a pretty dire situation.

Only about 20% are there for drug related crimes -- dealing and trafficking. Put another way, we could set them all free and we'd still be number one. By a huge margin.

In 2003, 68% of prison and jail inmates were members of racial or ethnic minority groups. More minorities are in prison than in college. Remove them from the statistic, and we drop from 2.3 million to 740,000 -- less than Russia.

It is not like we just lock people up arbitrarily. Those folks in our prisons are there because a judge and jury determined that they needed to be punished for committing one or more crimes. This high rate of incarceration probably says a lot about the break down of our society more than anything else.

21
posted on 02/29/2008 5:58:37 AM PST
by The Great RJ
("Mir we bleiwen wat mir sin" or "We want to remain what we are." ..Luxembourg motto)

My wife and I were in Quito, Equador a couple of years ago. In downtown, the walls surrounding property are topped with broken glass and barbed wire. Heavy metal shutters cover business fronts at night. When open, every shop had an armed guard.

We went out to one of the nicer restaurants one evening. Our taxi was met by the doorman armed with an AK-47. I kid you not.

2/3 of them are Americans. How about deporting the 1/3 and put more Americans behind bars to fill the void? Then maybe I’d be able to visit downtown Baltimore without seeing a stabbing, mugging, or carjacking.

25
posted on 02/29/2008 6:04:56 AM PST
by Vision
("If God so clothes the grass of the field...will He not much more clothe you...?" -Matthew 6:30)

The widely cited figure of 1/3 foreigners in our jails is for FEDERAL prisons, which hold only about 10% of all prisoners (and, of course, concentrate on smuggling, immigration and other offenses whre foreigners would be overrepresented). A DOJ reports says only about 10% of the total number of prisoners in the US are foreigners. Check the site for “Bureau of Justice Statistics.”

“My wife and I were in Quito, Ecuador a couple of years ago. In downtown, the walls surrounding property are topped with broken glass and barbed wire. Heavy metal shutters cover business fronts at night....”

Reminds me of the French Quarter in New Orleans BEFORE Katrina hit. Lot’s of razor wire, too. And it’s still like that today...

The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there arent enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. 

Excellent quote. The same could be said for taxation, too.....

33
posted on 02/29/2008 6:31:11 AM PST
by Thermalseeker
(Silence is not always a Sign of Wisdom, but Babbling is ever a Mark of Folly. - B. Franklin)

The story isn’t how many people are locked up, the story here is the necessity of having to lock these people up. Locking up crimnals is a reaction to their behavior and their personal choice to commit crime. Jail or prison is where they need to be.

I'm just glad the system didn't let Martha Stewart slip through its fingers. And it's a good thing Bill Clinton and his supporters decriminalized perjury, rape, sexual assault, and the intimidation of witnesses; at least that gives the prison system some relief.

41
posted on 02/29/2008 6:56:54 AM PST
by Savage Beast
("History is not just cruel. It is witty." ~Charles Krauthammer)

In most cases, you don’t get sent to prison for selling a few grams on the 1st offense. Those locked up for that have already been through the WOD system maybe a half dozen times before the judge got tired of looking at them.

“It made my heart ache, you know, to see all these beautiful black men in the joint. The warriors should be out there helping the masses. I felt that way, I was real naive. Six weeks I was up there and I talked to the brothers. I talked to ‘em, and ... thank God we got penitentiaries!” - Richard Pryor

In most cases, you dont get sent to prison for selling a few grams on the 1st offense.

In drug sane states it's true.

Here in Penn State, I knew several students sentenced to months for selling around 3 grams of weed. Many brilliant Engineering students that didn't realize how much sh** they could get into.

Over here, you must either do time for selling or rat somebody out.

An old buddy of mine was set-up by a "girlfriend" in this town. He sold her some of his Rx painkillers and she was an informant. The guy was highly regarded in the Business school and already had a job lined up for 200k after graduation.

He never sold anything before but the mandatory minimum was something like a year.

The whole thing ruined his life and he killed himself last year. A victim of the drug war that turns friends into "informants".

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